AI Is Becoming an Excuse to Fire People. Here's How to Use It Responsibly, with Anne Cantera

Anne Cantera: One of the reasons why left corporate was I'm a good agentic builder. I'm, I started early, and then I started to realize that these multi-agent systems that I'm building are going to be an excuse to fire people. They're not gonna replace those people, but they're gonna be a, an excuse to fire people en masse, and I didn't want that on my conscience. So that was one of the reasons why I pivoted and started my consultancy, because I want to use AI as an equalizer for the underserved.

Erica Rooney: Welcome to Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, the podcast where we stop playing small, start calling things out, and actually do something about it. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, executive coach, speaker, and a little bit of a movement maker, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there.

Erica Rooney: All right, y'all know that I wrote the book called The AI Gap: Women, AI, and the Next Great Leap Forward, and this is all about the idea that if women do not get into this technology now, if we don't start really just understanding how to speak with it, how to work with it, how to use it ethically and responsibly, that it is going to widen every single gap that we have spent decades closing. Now, listen, y'all, today's guest, she got there before I did, and so I am super excited to have her on here. But her name is Anne Cantera, and she has been building on the internet, y'all, since 2001. This is, the story that I'm so excited to hear about because a few years ago, she has what she describes as almost this divine moment where she saw a post, and that was the thing that changed her career track the very next day. And y'all, she went all in on AI before most people even heard of it. Now, listen, while other people in her industry were busy sending out all of these different applications, she was the one getting hit up by recruiters calling her nonstop. Now, today, she is the founder and CEO of Elementyl Intelligence, which is a responsible AI consulting firm that works specifically with small and sized businesses, and a lot of women owned businesses too. And it's all about implementing AI in ways that are honest, ethical, and that actually fit the operation that you have. Now, she's also created something called voiceofai.io, which is a completely free nonprofit platform with over 20 modules that teaches AI fundamentals to anyone who wants to understand what's actually happening. Y'all, these free resources are everywhere. Tap into them. But today, she is currently building something that is called Agent Modus, which is a visualization platform that helps businesses map how their AI systems work before any code is ever written. And y'all, she got a lot to say, and she is not afraid to say it. So Anne, welcome to the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors podcast. How are you?

Anne Cantera: Thank you. I'm well. That was awesome. I'm certainly not afraid to say it. I'm, waiting for the backlash. It hasn't come yet, I think because people agree with what I have to say, especially women.

Erica Rooney: Especially women, and this is something so interesting that we talk about because the data shows that, women were more anxious to lean in the beginning, not because we were scared to use it or any bullsh*t like that you hear, but because we had actual ethical things that we were thinking about, and we wanted to know how is it for the environment? How is it for people? What is the impact gonna be? So before we kinda dive into your story, 'cause I am interested in that, I do wanna hear what are your thoughts on that? Are women slower to adopt because we wanna make sure all of the ethical considerations are taken care of? Or what do you think?

Anne Cantera: So what I think is this is my 31st podcast in six weeks because the big microphones out there, the mainstream media, will not tell the truth about women in the space. They bring shills like Mel Robbins and Reese Witherspoon into the mix because they'll, follow the script, and the script is, we're weak, we're not here, we're not in the space, we're, not getting the jobs. We're... What we want and what we're saying flies in the face of the AI CEOs. We want security. We want kids to be safe. We want governance. We want the environment to be okay. They don't want people out and about talking about that, so I have been on a mission to go on as many little microphones as I can get and, talk about this because, nobody's talking about it.

Anne Cantera: I think I have emailed over 40 reporters over the last year trying to get somebody to write about this from a voice. It doesn't have to be me. Any actual woman in AI, get her in the spotlight. Get, her to say the things that most of us are thinking and feeling. And I think I may have struck gold with Forbes finally, but it has been a long grind to finally get somebody to say, “Yeah, you know what? You're right.” There are no women who actually work in the space being highlighted in the mainstream media and having a voice. The... It just, it's... I, think it's suppression by design, but we'll, we're, going to fight. We're gonna fight back and see what happens, and that's why I'm here. I... We need to talk about it. We... The voices of the women in the space need to be heard, and there are so many of us. It's not like there's a shortage.

Erica Rooney: I'm writing this down, suppression by design. Tell me what you mean by that. That's catchy, girl.

Anne Cantera: Look at who owns TikTok. Look at who owns everything really. Between Elon and Zuck and, Sam, and, it, they, don't, we don't even need last names for them anymore. Everybody kind of knows, the super villains of the space. They don't want us talking about this. They don't... I'm, I've been watching Erin Brockovich, over the last few weeks. She's doing, quite the tour, and, she said she's never seen the left and the right, and people in general, galvanize around data centers. Yeah, that's the general public feeling. But you'll, you won't see women out there in, the mainstream media talking about it, women who work in the space, because we don't get a voice in the mainstream media, and I think that's the part that's by design. When you see women talking about AI on TV, it was it's been Reese Witherspoon, right? Owned by BlackRock. It's been Mel Robbins, famous grifter. Demi Moore, which that was weird. So I'm just trying to... Listen, like I said, I'm not doing it, because I want to be in the spotlight. I'd be happy with any of the hundreds of women who work in this space to be, on those big channels, to be on those, big magazine. We're not there. They're... We're not there

Erica Rooney: No. And so I started talking about this and I got the idea for my second book, The AI Gap. It was a year ago at the AI-Powered Women's Conference. So when you're sitting there talking about, there are plenty of women, I can't even tell you how many conferences I've gone to with AI educators, people who are founding AI companies, CTOs, like insanely smart AI people. And, Anne, what really sparked the whole idea for the book was all of these incredible women at this conference were out to dinner, and one of them had the idea to ask ChatGPT at the time, “Based on everything you know about me, generate an image of what you think I look like.” And of course, I don't even gotta tell you know every single woman got a picture of an old, pale, stale, white male with a little, just a little difference, glasses here, a goatee there, with the exception of one woman, and she got a picture of herself, but it had a piece of artwork in the background that said, “We men belong in the rooms where decisions are made.”

Anne Cantera: Wild.

Erica Rooney: My girl Ruth, right? Ruth would be rolling over in her grave if she heard that. Butchering her quote. But that was the moment where I knew we had to write about it, and then I started talking with more people and thinking about it from the systemic point of view, which is why I like this idea of suppression by design. And AI is just doing what it was taught to do, what it was programmed to do. It is a pattern recognition machine, and so what do we know about all of the patterns of the world, especially as it relates to power? Is that it has always been concentrated in very certain areas, very certain demographics, and AI is just gonna compound that if we don't do the work that you and I are talking about.

Anne Cantera: I keep calling it a hubris-fueled, ego-driven, mistakes at the epic proportion period of AI. Nothing's going right, and it, and I, and I've, been on several enterprise-level AI projects, and they are being, back then, put together by people who had no experience in the space, thought it would be cheap, thought it would be easy, thought it would be set it and forget it, and had enough ego and hubris to just be blindly putting one step, foot in front of the other and just winging it. And my, one of my taglines is, “Don't DIY your AI,” because you just, you need people who understand how it works. It's going wrong, and that is, it's trickle-down leadership what's going wrong. I saw a post a few weeks ago from a designer who said, “Oh, my design team got in trouble for using all their tokens on by Wednesday instead of Friday.” And I said, “Are you doing spec-driven design?” And she was like, “No, what's that? We just prompt.” And I'm like, “That is a failure of leadership. That is a failure. He gave you a Ferrari, and you don't have a license.” This is, something that really you're, setting, your teams up to fail and then blaming them. So that's, But it's hubris. I, cannot... When you've worked with enough leadership in corporate to understand how they think and how they work, I was at a chief AI officer conference recently, and, they practically needed drool buckets when they were talking about super ICs. They were drooling over taking their team of 20 and whittling it down to two super ICs. That is typical shortsighted corporate leadership. What if one of your super ICs gets hit by a bus? Now you're down to one, right? You just lost 10 people, right? 10, like what you think is 10... Everything is just so shortsighted, so completely about the next quarter. It, no long-term planning, no realization of you, Say, you build a customer service agent, and you put it out into the world, it, you're not done. The new set of work starts after launch, and they all thought it was like, the, AI's just gonna do everything, and it's gonna be perfect, and it's so far from the truth, so far from the reality. And now I think three years in, we're finally seeing, all right, we need to take a hard pivot. This isn't working. Even Meta, and I love to revel in Meta's failures, they, thought that, we're gonna replace thousands of employees with agents, and it failed miserably. And I'm around some of the best agentic builders on the planet. It's just not It's not happening yet. Will it happen? Yes. So

Anne Cantera: One of the reasons why left corporate was I'm a, good agentic builder. I'm, I started early, and then I started to realize that these multi-agent systems that I'm building are going to be an excuse to fire people. They're not gonna replace those people, but they're gonna be a, an excuse to fire people en masse, and I didn't want that on my conscience. So that was one of the reasons why I pivoted and started my consultancy, because I want to use AI as an equalizer for the underserved. It works in theory for a while until it comes down to who can afford the best models. And I think down the road we're going to see that drastic kind of class warfare between the haves and have-nots.

Anne Cantera: I was just about to say that. I was just about to say those exact words because it feels real scary because it's gonna be those people who already have the capital, who we already know who those crazy people are, and it's just gonna keep compounding. And y'all, it is 2026. Do I need to tell you what is going on in the state of this world already that is crazy town?

Erica Rooney: No. But think about if all of those individuals get more money, more power, and it just becomes this world that you can't even compete. That is truly the scary part. Okay. So I love that you said it is an excuse to fire people, and I do think that is going to be the immediate reaction. But talk to me, what are the consequences for those companies who go down that route, who are looking at it strictly from, that bottom line standpoint, I can save headcount dollars?

Anne Cantera: But we've seen it, right? Remember Klarna? So Klarna decided they were going to replace, their customer service agents with AI agents, right? I think they laid off 800 of them and then hired them back within a couple months because it went sideways. It went sideways.

Anne Cantera: This tech is in, is fetal. I used to say it's in its infancy. It's fetal, right? We're just not there yet and, should there be the goal, right? Replacing... I think the stories we get out of like people like Elon of you know, humans are gonna be in a hammock, smoking cigarettes and eating chocolate all day while the robots take care of everything is just absolute like manchild. Maybe but it's, they, it's, 14-year-old boy rejected by women manchild fantasies, I think. That should be on a shirt. I like that.

Anne Cantera: The hope I have is there's two things that keep me super hopeful. One is LLMs are not the be-all, end-all of AI. Like the data center thing, it's not sustainable. People don't want it, and why, would LLMs like the be the be-all, end-all, right? They're never gonna be accurate. Hallucinations are never gonna stop. Yes, you can put some agentic frameworks around it and make improvements, but they're so flawed at their core. Why would they be the last stop? Why... We have to evolve past LLMs. It's ridiculous to think because he says it, the company's worth a billion, and, just the insanity around the, money and the way they talk about the money and too big to fail and blah. This is not, this is a step in what, there's more coming. This, isn't the end of, the evolution of AI. There's more to come. So I think that's shortsighted. And I think the people are realizing we can't depend on government or anybody to take care of us. There are movements happening, and they're building. I did a post about Meta yesterday or the day before. It had 100,000 views. It was, probably the best post I've, ever done. And basically all it said was,

Anne Cantera: At this point in time, it seems to me if you still have any accounts with these unethical companies, you're just complicit to child abuse, right? And, people don't like that

Erica Rooney: No.

Anne Cantera: Statement. But I kinda equate it to if you were driving down the road and you saw a child there that was maybe, had no shoes and was dirty and looked thin, frail, wouldn't you stop? Wouldn't you stop to help? And if you wouldn't, you're the problem. But if you would, then you need to think about what your addiction to your social media is doing to your morality in the sense of if you saw that child on the side of the road, you would stop to help them, but you won't close... You, continue to do business with child abusers. There is a lot to unpack there. But to me, in the simplest form, that's what that's that. And I know people are like, “But my business depends on it.” Listen, I, understand everybody needs to feed their family. I'm not saying that. But your personal account that you use to kinda jerk around and do silly things, you, have power. You can send a message. And I, and I just think that, people are finally catching up to the fact that nobody's coming to save them, and you have to do what you can as an individual person to make a difference.

Erica Rooney: Have you read the book Careless People?

Anne Cantera: Good one, but not surprising to me at all surprising at all, right? And for anyone listening, the book Careless People, it is written about the Meta Facebook regime and all the people at the top, and what it really is about that moment when Mark Zuckerberg realizes that Facebook helped, Facebook not just helped, but, really got Donald Trump to win his first presidential election.

Erica Rooney: Now, that just, clicked something over in his mind where it, really was a realization for him of how much power he had. Now, some people, usually women, use that power for good. He has clearly not, and he has just expanded at all costs without slowing down to think about what are those ramifications, right? And so this is, what I see happening with AI, and we've got the EU AI Act, which just, came out not too long ago. But, Europe's got at least some of their sh*t together. They're like, “Hey, let's pump the brakes just a little bit collectively so that we can make sure we're all good.” What I don't know that everybody in the United States realizes is, you might be doing business with global partners and global customers who are all held to that level of standard. All right, so let's talk about this actual implementation piece because we do have a lot of women who listen or who run their own businesses or have their own teams. Like, when you're thinking about implementing ethical AI, what is the very first step they need to take, right? Is it education? Is it, a step back? How do you guide these small to mid-sized businesses?

Anne Cantera: So I don't think the size of the business even matters. It's governance and education. Governance, I just spent, last few weeks working with my team to create, our AI constitution, and your own governance policy, and because we're an ethics-first AI company, it's really important, super meaningful. But, it's really just a set of rules. What will you, what won't you, what's acceptable, what isn't? I like to start there, get a gauge on what the founder's about and, where they are willing to take it. If I have a founder who just wants to, AI so they can fire everybody, I don't do business with... Like I, that's not a client for me. But a lot of it, what I have found, and I, like I said, I go to a lot of women in person, women in business meetups, and general, business networking. A lot of people have a deep unawareness of what's going on. Like they, “Oh, I've heard of ChatGPT. I used it once or twice to get a recipe.” Like there aren't... There are people who, use it minimally, and I feel like that's growing. But the amount of people who own businesses who know very little is much higher than I anticipated.

Erica Rooney: Yeah. Sometimes I find it a challenge to step out of my AI bubble, and I just assume everyone's right there along with me. But you really do have to stop and dial it in because I do a lot of these AI fundamental webinars where I am teaching very basic prompt engineering, right? And, like, how do you secure your settings and just the basic point and clicks. And when I tell you, I'll get questions where it's like, “Hold on. Where do I put the prompt?” “Where am I clicking?” That is... And I don't say that to be like, “Oh my God, I can't believe these people don't know,” but I say it because sometimes when you are so in it, my girl Judy has the best saying for it. It's, “You can't read the label when you're in the jar.” And you and I are deep in that jar. We can't see it, and It's are so many people. Meetups It's so important to get out there and to talk to them and to bring all of these women along with us because like you said, if we start bringing all of these women together in droves, that is where we can really create the movement. So tell me about this movement you're working on. I think everybody on this show needs to hear.

Anne Cantera: It, I wouldn't call it a movement. It was two things. One, it was outreach to reporters trying to get them to get us properly represented in the mainstream media. That was just email after email And the

Erica Rooney: About menopause. They'll put a white man up there talking about menopause like he knows what the hell he's talking about, you're gonna send me

Anne Cantera: Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole other episode, which I'm happy to come talk about. No, what my theory is,

Anne Cantera: I probably belong to, and I'm not exaggerating this number, 50, 60, 70 women in AI groups, and this one has 100, this one has 1,000, this one has 3,000, right? This one has 10,000, and they're disjointed, and all I could think was, imagine if we could unite, a million of us, a million women strong, right? Remember the Million Women March? Imagine the million women in AI tech movement. It would give us economic power, political power. So I just started emailing a handful of women who run these groups, and all of them were like, “Absolutely, yes.” It doesn't mean you have to give up your group. It just... It's almost like a union, right? You're gonna represent your team in that... I picture the Jedi Council 'cause I am that 14-year-old boy nerd in my soul sometimes. The Jedi Council, there's this circle of women being the, main council and then the hundreds of thousand, millions of women who belong in their groups united for power, right? That's dangerous. I, sometimes... Thank God I have two big sons, two big dogs, and a husband who's like the Terminator, because I say things that make me think people are gonna end up sitting outside of my house someday.

Anne Cantera: So luckily, I'm pretty fearless. Need to unionize. We need to

Erica Rooney: Tight with a former state CIO who happens to be a woman, and she actually and an ex-Google exec, and she stepped down because of the death threats that she was getting on a regular basis. She had security system so strong that, if a bird landed on her lawn, people would know about it. And, she is an ethical person, but people just feel so strongly about everything that's going on with AI and the data centers that they don't even stop to actually sometimes look at these leaders' stances on it. But Yeah. Be smart

Anne Cantera: With a company that, like I don't... There... The list of people and companies that I won't do business with, like I don't have a Twitter, I don't have a Facebook, I don't have an Instagram. I refuse. I don't even wanna have a LinkedIn. I just joined a new one called Supernova. I'm, on the waiting list for another one. People, are just... And this is the pattern. My superpower is pattern recognition. It's how I got into AI early. That is my, that is my superpower.

Erica Rooney: You are the human form of the machine

Anne Cantera: I don't know what it is. I am on the spectrum, so maybe that's part of it, but that's how I got into AI early. I, calculated the patterns I'd been seeing and said, “Oh, that's what it's pointing to.” What I see now that it's pointing to is

Anne Cantera: People are starving for companies that are decent. Recently, I don't know if you know who Nicki Petrossi is. She's a really huge child advocate. She's at all the Meta court cases. She... Her following... I, feel like she should have millions of followers. Her... She doesn't have a huge following. But she had gone on Pinterest and started playing around, opened up an account, pretended to be a 14-year-old child. Very quickly started to get inappropriate self-harm content. They reached out to her, 'cause she posted about it, and said, “Help us do something about this.” go Pinterest. But that's basic decency, and Yeah. Are asking for

Erica Rooney: Yeah. That's so interesting, and I've got small kids. I've got an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old, so I'm all up in that world just trying to make sure I know what they're looking at, what they have access to, what they don't have access to, making sure that they understand, those hits of those YouTube Shorts that they like are dopamine hits. It's, and it, also just, aside from all of that, just the comparison, the depression, and all of those things that stem from that is bananas, it's a

Anne Cantera: Person, but my one regret, especially with my youngest who's 16, is not knowing. And he's not like a Facebook kid or He was a, he's a TikTok kid and, I find myself, like if I put on YouTube Shorts, like it's like a drug.

Erica Rooney: Oh. Yes. Was actually talking, you would find this person really interesting, I was talking with an addiction psychotherapist specialist who focuses on, and I cannot remember the exact word that she used, but it was about how all of, these new generations that are coming up are not diving into things like alcohol like we did. They're diving into social media, and they are all addicted to that and getting the different dopamine hits. But it is still those same dopamine hits. It's still triggering the same addictive cycle, and those are just things that we have to be aware about, you know, things we have to know,

Anne Cantera: Yes. I think, all the safety precautions they're putting in place and the font, it's all BS. And, those people who are like, “Oh,” it's always, I hate to say, it's always men in the comments like, “They shouldn't be accountable. Parents should be accountable.” And my response is, “Do a lot of parenting, do you?” Because it's, such a statement from somebody who's never parented a day in their life. My son, my oldest son, he used to be able to get through those parental controls in minutes every single time, and I work in tech. We would just physically have to take the phones. Like that's, the, that's what you have to do. You have to, if you don't want your kid engaging in addictive behavior on their phone, you have to physically take the phone away. That's, and that is really hard to do as a parent with three kids, two dogs, a husband who works 70, 80 hours a week,

Erica Rooney: And when every other, every other, family out there is already buying it, and oh, they all have unlimited game

Anne Cantera: All have it to... Yeah. Yeah

Erica Rooney: And they're the only one who didn't know about the thing 'cause they're not in the group chat

Anne Cantera: So yeah, there's a lot more to it than it's up to the parents. It's partially up to the parents, right? It's just, you can really tell, who, what a person's about by some of their very basic comments,

Erica Rooney: Especially when they're just going rogue on the Facebook, right? But Anne, what I will say is this has been such an intriguing, left turn, twisty, turvy podcast. We've talked about AI, we've talked about data centers, we've talked about women in AI, we've talked about social media and the dangers of social media, but all of this ties back up to the root of what your company does, which is ethical tech and, staying ethical, and I think that is such a needed piece. It is a piece that women are searching for and want, but we have to keep driving it forward and we have to keep pushing it forward. If you were going to say one thing to some of these women who are listening who have these concerns, but they know, “I can't not participate,” what would that piece of advice be?

Anne Cantera: Don't be quiet, right? If a company knows you want something from them and you will do more business with them if they provide it to you, they do care, because they wanna make money, right? So if they know you'll spend more because they're gonna provide you with things you want, but they don't know what you want if you don't talk about it. I read about people who are afraid to post, they're afraid to comment, they're afraid... You have to, I shouldn't say you have to, but think about stating your needs. Your needs won't get fulfilled if you don't state them. R it's Right...yeah.

Erica Rooney: Yeah. I tell everybody, “Go run the prompt that I said at the top of the hour. Based on everything you know about me, generate an image of what you think I look like,” right? Because depending on how much you use it, how often, which one you're using, if it's a paid version, a free version, like you might generate something that looks like you. But girl, I did my keynote not too long ago, and there were still people in the audience who would run it, like a Black woman, an Asian woman, white women, and they would get that white man back. So it is not... Just because one person doesn't see it doesn't mean that it's not happening, and you gotta think about the percentage of people who are actually all up in AI is very small compared to the eight billion people in this world. Diagram with the dots? Yes. That's a that's very telling. Yes. I will post about that. I'll post about it in our, podcast page. But these are the things we have to think about, and I know that the people who listen to this podcast are very focused on ethics 'cause they're my people. That's what looking for. So Anne, I appreciate having you on the show. If people wanna get involved in this movement, if they wanna learn more about you, how can they get in touch with you? Where's the best place to find you? 'Cause we

Anne Cantera: Would no, I would say LinkedIn for now. I'm the

Erica Rooney: For

Anne Cantera: There. I'm very easy to find. I'm the only one. Sometimes you search for people and there's 400 people with the same name, but I'm the only Anne Cantera out there. I would say LinkedIn. That's where kind of my, town hall or town halls are held. I do have a podcast. It's called Designathon. It's very hard to find on YouTube, but it's easy to find on Apple and all those other ones. Designathon, D-E-S-I-G-N-A-T-H-O-N. It's not just about design. It's about design and AI and ethics and bias and all the things, but also robotics and agentic engineering and all the hot stuff.

Erica Rooney: Amazing. Amazing. Add it to your list. Otherwise, thank you for listening today. Make sure you are using the machine, you're pushing back on the machine, and you are being loud about the machine. Anne, thanks for joining us

Anne Cantera: You so much. This was fun

Erica Rooney: If this episode resonated with you, don't let it stop here. Send it to a woman you care about, a colleague, a friend, someone who's been on your mind while you were listening. These conversations are meant to be shared, and you never know what one small shift can unlock for someone else. And if you haven't already, make sure that you're following the podcast. Leave a rating and write a quick review. It helps more women find this space, and it keeps these conversations going. If you're ready to go deeper, come a little closer. Send me a DM. I'll invite you to sit in on a live Her Collective session as my personal guest. No pressure, no strings attached, but you get to experience it, feel the room, and see what happens when women start moving together. Until next time, y'all, keep going. Keep choosing differently, and let's smash the ceilings and close the gaps